24 Tips To Help You Become The Ultimate Spider-Man

Spider-Man is an open-world experience that offers plenty of depth in its web swinging, combat, and activities. We've assembled a guide that will help you navigate all of this content proficiently. There's no wrong way through it, but we offer plenty of suggestions that will make it easier and more enjoyable. Before reading any of the tips below, we recommend playing through an hour or two of the game to get an understanding of the gameplay and how the content rolls out.

The Best Way to Handle Side Activities
Once you obtain a backpack, you’ll likely feel compelled to collect all 55 of them as quickly as you can. This is something you can easily do, but I would avoid doing so, as the side activities that appear later in the game are mostly combat focused. Having some of the fun diversionary stuff like the backpacks left in the third act will make the entire experience more enjoyable. I would also save a number of landmarks, and Black Cat missions.

Don’t Sleep on City Crimes
The random city crimes are the one side activity you don’t want to avoid. I’m not saying you should go out of your way to tackle them whenever they appear, but I’d recommend completing a couple after every story mission, as more random crimes are added to each district as the story unfolds. You don’t want to end up having 10 to 20 of them to complete in a district when making your final push for 100-percent game completion.

Don’t Ignore the Secondary Objectives
When stopping a random city crime, make sure to press R3 to see how you should approach each battle. Usually they are simple tasks, like launch three criminals into the air, and completing them rewards additional bonuses that are worthwhile.

City Traversal
To make web swinging as painless and efficient as possible, invest in the Point Launch Boost and Quick Recovery skills early on in the game. Both of these moves keep momentum going. You’ll need to use both of them extensively if you are seeking gold medals in Taskmaster’s challenges.

The Fastest Web Swing
You can comfortably glide across the city by just pressing R2 to web swing. The fastest way to cover ground, however, is to get in a routine of using the web zip (performed by pressing X) and point launch (by hitting R2 and L2 simultaneously followed by X). Both of these moves propel Spidey forward with great speed. The point launch is a little difficult to master, but over time, you’ll learn the timing and proximity for using it effectively. A good place to practice this technique is on a lengthy street filled with lights. Use those poles to get the rhythm down.

Grind Experience Points
If you don’t use fast travel (which you probably won’t given how much fun web swinging is), invest skill points in Air Tricks early on in the game. Each time you perform a trick, you’ll earn a couple of experience points. In one big swing, you may get 10 to 14 points. This may not seem like much, but it will add up over time, especially if tricking becomes second nature to you. You’ll gain levels faster than normal and should hit 50 well before the conclusion of the game.

Combat Basics
As extensive as Spider-Man’s combat is, I found it can be broken down into four strategies: comboing, evasion, air, and gadgets. Performing combos with the square button is an easy way to clear space. Use these attacks to keep enemies at bay. If they are crowding you, start a combo on one enemy, and continue it on another nearby. This technique will prevent them from attacking you for a second or two, and that small window ends up being a huge advantage in the game. You’ll also want to use evasive maneuvers as much as possible to create safe combat areas. If someone is shooting at you with a gun or rocket launcher, use evasion to cut their sight lines. You’ll also need to use evasion to slide through the legs of enemies carrying shields. Deal with the big threats first – rockets and guns pose the most danger. Larger foes, enemies with melee weapons (like whips), and shield enemies are next. Leave the fodder for last if you can. If you have a number of enemies closing in on you, launch one enemy into the air to clear space. Focus on that foe, and then lock on to the next foe you want to attack with a web zip while in the air. This is also a great location to use gadgets. You can use L2 to slow time from this viewpoint to launch electric webs, web bombs, or a suspension matrix.  

Act on Spider-Sense Every Time
If Spidey is alerted of a threat, act on it every single time. Don’t think for a second that you can finish off a foe before addressing the spider sense. You’re better off evading and then continuing your assault. This will allow you to keep your combos going longer, and should keep you safe in most battles.

Begin With a Ground Strike
If you can drop in on a combat encounter from a decent height, center yourself over a pocket of enemies and use the ground strike skill (performed by simultaneously press square and X). This will stun everyone in the area, and may even knock a few down. If you are quick, you can web up the downed foes with a web bomb, which will take them out of the equation permanently.

Heal as you Combo
Get in a routine of tapping down on the d-pad whenever your health is below 50 percent. Some enemies with guns can deplete a large chunk of your life with one shot, so it’s always good to keep your health meter filled. If you are in danger of death, find an easy opponent to perform a quick combo on. After five or six hits, heal. You can also heal at any point during combat, even if you are in the air in the middle of a combo. Press down on the d-pad to give yourself the protection you need.

Use Finishers at the Right Times
As tempting as it is to use a finisher to down a challenging foe in one hit, your health comes first. Finishers and healing consume the same focus meter. If you use a finisher, you may not have any focus left to heal. Only use finishers if you are good on health or are at the end of a conflict.

Use Enemy Fire as a Weapon
Spider-Man doesn’t kill, but that doesn’t mean he can’t trick his opponents into shooting each other. If an enemy with a weapon has you in his sights, you can slide through another foe's legs or flip behind them at the right time to have that gun fire on him instead of you. This is a tricky technique to get down, but is a game changer in the larger Sable battles in the third act.

Perfect Dodge
The best skills for combat purposes are Perfect Dodge and Dodge Window. If you can time it right, which isn’t hard, this evasive maneuver will instantly stun an enemy and open up an easy takedown. It is also the best way to take down the larger enemies if you aren’t using gadgets.

Webbing & Walls
Pay attention to your surroundings. If a troublesome enemy is near a wall, a web bomb may take him down with one hit, as he’ll be pulled onto the wall. Bouncing off of a wall is also a great way to create space in larger conflicts.

Prioritize Towers & Vehicles
When Sable shows up, use your webbing to pull down this organization’s watchtowers and remove the automated turrets from vehicles before engaging any foes. Both of these stationary targets deal significant damage and can be difficult to read. Removing them before focusing on enemies is a huge help.

Best Combat Gadgets
No combo produces more simultaneous takedowns than suspended matrix followed by a web bomb. By placing suspended matrix in a crowd, you can elevate anywhere from a few to nearly a dozen enemies at once. When the matrix expires, most of these foes will land on their backs, and will quickly return to their feet. If you time a web bomb throw correctly, it can detonate when they are still on their backs, leading to almost all of them being pinned immediately.  For stealth, use trip mines to take out two enemies at once, and impact web to remove singular foes as much as you can. Spider drones can also help at the outset of a fight.

How Do I Earn Challenge Tokens?
You aren’t doing anything wrong in the early stages of the game. Challenge Tokens first appear with the Taskmaster missions, which don’t open up until you get a good ways through the story. Once these missions appear, you’ll need to perform well to earn a bronze, silver, or gold rating – each nets you one, two, or three tokens, respectively.

The Easiest Way to Earn Challenge Tokens
Taskmaster’s stealth missions take patience and perfecting patterns and combos to achieve the highest rank. The drone stages can also be tricky, especially if you are going for a gold rating in them. The easiest (and most entertaining) missions are the combat exercises.

The Best Way To Stealth
In standard missions, light poles are your best friends, as you can easily take down unsuspecting targets from this vantage point by pressing square to web them up. Most environments are littered with poles, so you shouldn’t have much trouble picking away at the enemy forces. For Taskmaster’s stealth challenges, the stealth web technique is way too slow. Again, use the light poles and similar spaces to line up stealth takedowns, but hit triangle instead to perform a one-hit takedown. This move will leave you vulnerable, but you should be able to zoom back up to the same location or find another perch to prowl from.

Taskmaster Drone Races
The drones show you the perfect path to take and hint at the move that should be used. If an orb appears along a wall, use a wall run technique. If it appears above an object, use the point launch – making sure you have it highlighted. All too often, you may point launch off of a ledge in front of the object you really wanted to hit. Since every second counts, use your web dash and dive as much as you can to accelerate.

Taskmaster Bomb Challenges
Functionally similar to the Drone Races, the Bomb Challenges task Spider-Man with disabling bombs in three locations in the city. Point launches and web zips are your best bet when it comes to speeding to each bomb, and make sure that when you get close to the bomb you zip to point directly on top of the bomb by focusing on it and pressing L2 and R3. Start holding down L1 and R1 right when you land. The temptation is to jump and land right next to the bombs, but Spider-Man will zip directly to it if you aim right.

The Best Suit Configuration For Combat Challenges
One of the first meaningful unlocks is the Stark Suit from Spider-Man Homecoming. This suit is equipped with the Spider-Bro drone companion, which shocks random enemies during combat encounters. I found the Spider-Bro to be an invaluable piece of my combat challenge strategies, as it would stun numerous foes at once, allowing me to build up bigger combos and multipliers. For general combat, Web Blossom, which can be unlocked early with the Classic Suit (Repaired), is also great for thinning out big crowds quickly. In terms of mods, I recommend Gel Padding and Ballistic Inserts to reduce the damage taken (since that is a scoring multiplier). I also use Bio Mesh to keep combo strings going.

Newspaper Machines and Twitter
This isn’t a tip, but more of a heads-up that you can interact with all of the Daily Bugle newspaper dispensers you see in the city. You’ll see the front page of each issue, which offer the media's perspective on your Spidey action. If you press the square button while in the game’s menu, you’ll bring up Spider-Man’s Twitter feed, which offers some amusing banter and observations all the way through the game.

Secret Landmarks
During play, you may stumble upon a secret landmark or two. Don’t worry, you don’t have to take photos of everything you see. You’ll eventually unlock a proximity sensor suit mod that will highlight the secret locations when get within a block or two of them. You won’t see them on your large map from a distance, so you’ll need to comb the land to find them.